This is probably one of those have-to-be-there books. It's, err, it's a young book, best read when you're full of hope and arrogance and insecurity. Basically when you're about 15.

Carraway-esque narrator at some kind liberal American arts college (I do not know how education works over there, okay?) falls in with a group beautiful, fascinating, pretentious, infuriating classics students.

Who murdered someone during a Bacchanalian blood-sex-orgy gone wrong.

Followed by one of their friends to keep the secret.

There are two aloof, borderline incestuous twins. A tortured genius. A tragic gay. And a probably homosexual Svengali.

Everybody is unbearable. But, in its way, it's embarrassingly sincere. Capturing something ineffable about the twisted fantasies of youth.

I mean, let's face it, at some point in our lives we've always wanted to belong to a secret group of enticing outsiders who have done terrible things, right?

I dare not read this again but I know it won't ever mean as much to me again as when I first read it, aged (appropriately enough) 15, fell in love with, desperately identified with and simultaneously wanted to be pretty much entire cast.